11" x 11" image with 1" hand-painted border (13" x 13" finished print) on 380g, matte-finished fine artist's canvas.
Open edition, with each digital print featuring embellishments hand-applied by the artist, Howie Green, making each one a unique work-of-art. Please note that larger sizes of this print (24" square, 30" square and 38" square - stretched and mounted on wood stretchers - ready-to-hang!) are also available as special orders. Shipped unmatted/unframed - Comes with Certificate of Authenticity signed by the artist.
Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs was a Derek and the Dominos album produced by Tom Dowd and released by Atco Records in late 1970. While, at the time, it was met with only mild success (peaking at #16 on the pop album charts in the U.S., going gold, and then breaking back into the Top 200 charts twice, once in 1974 (#107) and then again in 1977 (hitting #183). Interestingly, a live album of the band’s concert tour in support of the record (titled In Concert, released in 1973), enjoyed brisk sales.
After the break-up of Blind Faith and Delaney and Bonnie (and Friends), who’d opened up for Blind Faith on their U.K. tour, guitarist Eric Clapton joined forces with D&B alumni Bobby Whitlock (Organ, Piano, Guitars, Vocals), Jim Gordon (Drums, Piano) and Carl Radle (Bass, Percussion), working primarily with Whitlock to write the songs that would ultimately be released on the new record.
The band took the new material out on a tour under the name "Derek and the Dominos" (Clapton not looking to tip the public about his participating in the new unit) and then went to Miami to record, with slide guitarist Duane Allman joining them in the studio. During the sessions, it became clear that Clapton’s passions were not for music alone – he was battling his incredible yearning for his best friend’s wife (Patti Boyd, wife of George Harrison, who he’d just played with on All Things Must Pass) and his growing heroin addiction. That his feelings were there – front and center – in both his song-writing and his performances was abundantly clear, touching anyone who listened to songs such as “Layla”, “Have You Ever Loved A Woman” and “Why Does Love Have To Be So Sad”.
The B-side of the single "Layla" was “Bell Bottom Blues”. Contrary to popular opinion, this song was NOT about Patti Boyd – rather, it was about a French girl who Clapton had a very brief fling with while they were in doing club dates France prior to recording the album. She wore the bell-bottom pants noted in the song’s title.
Emile Théodore Frandsen de Schomberg (1902 – 1969) was the French artist (painter, sculptor and poet) who produced the painting (titled "La Fille au Bouquet") that was licensed for use on the record cover. The band was staying with his son, Emile, when Clapton met the beautiful young woman who inspired the tune “Bell Bottom Blues”. According to his biography, the artist, too, was inspired by his muse, a woman named Rene with whom he had a 30-year relationship with. His paintings were principally highly imaginative and visionary portraits of women and still life subjects, such as the one chosen to illustrate Clapton’s record cover.
